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What Rey Means to Me (And Geek Girls Everywhere)

If you can't see it, you can't be it.

By Sarah QuinnPublished 7 years ago 4 min read
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Several years ago, Ellen Page made an incredibly relatable observation that could have come straight from the pages of my own childhood in the early 90s. “As a girl,” she said, “you're supposed to love Sleeping Beauty. I mean, who wants to love Sleeping Beauty when you can be Aladdin?”

As the oldest of three sisters, I realized early on it was pretty standard for girls to love wearing lacy dresses, high heels, and layers of bejeweled necklaces. I just wanted to go on adventures. When others identified me as a tomboy, I was confused. What was it about dreaming of finding treasure, sword fighting, daring chases on horseback, and piloting spaceships that made me some kind of boy? I resented the label, but I eventually saw the point. The type of books and movies that I liked, with few exceptions, did not feature self-rescuing princesses or women who led. There might be a few strong female characters here and there, but they tended to receive extra backhanded praise; “pretty good for a girl” was not good enough for me.

I knew I wasn’t imagining some kind of discrimination when two friends, Andy and Andrew, refused to let me captain the Enterprise (imagined in my backyard). “Girls can’t be captains,” they said dismissively. And that was that.

But Star Wars was my one true love, and Luke Skywalker was my hero. In my bed at night, I would imagine that I was a Jedi fighting for the Rebel Alliance. I frequently dreamed of blowing up the Death Star and battling Darth Vader. When I played Star Wars with my sisters in my parents’ darkened walk-in closet, we’d slowly pull the beam of a flashlight away from the wall, and I’d give the orders. This included insisting that my baby sister pretend to be R2-D2 (we are still on speaking terms, perhaps surprisingly). I never had a plastic lightsaber from the store, but I didn’t need one; we lived on three acres in the woods and I’d find some suitable stick and wander among the trees, creating the galaxy in my mind. At night I’d see red and blue lights flashing among the stars and know they were airplanes, but wish they were x-wings. This was pretty satisfying, really, and I fully realize that on my own, I got to do everything Star-Wars-obsessed boys did. It’s just that it was harder to see me, as myself and not as a man, lifting a ship above the swamps of Dagobah or pulling out a backflip in the middle of a lightsaber battle. Nobody really gets to be a rebel pilot or a Jedi knight in real life, but I think we all deserve the right to imagine it. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it” seems to apply here.

"Would somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?"

Let me be clear - it’s not that Princess Leia wasn’t a force to be reckoned with. She’s an incredible heroine and one of my favorite film characters of all time. If we can get beyond the metal bikini (which, to be fair, was Jabba’s fault, or George Lucas’s, depending on how you look at it), Leia had a solid take-no-prisoners attitude and was not in the movie to be eye candy. Unafraid of shooting at stormtroopers, mouthing off to Darth Vader, and smugly accusing General Tarkin of poor personal hygiene all in A New Hope alone, she takes over her own rescue when her would-be rescuers are a little hazy on the details. She may need help, but she’s never helpless, and her leadership of the rebellion throughout the saga is a far, far better thing than what most sci-fi ladies of the era could have even hoped for. But she has to keep working, keep speaking up to be a part of things, and she never becomes a Jedi in the films. Reading the Young Jedi series about Jacen and Jaina was thrilling for me (“Girls can use the force!”) but expanded universe material didn’t matter as much as the movies themselves, which I watched countless times.

Then there were the dark times, otherwise known as the prequels, in which Padme played a weak and submissive second fiddle to Anakin’s rage-filled reign of terror. There’s really too much to discount in Episodes I-III to focus on their portrayals of women, but it was clear to me that they had nothing to offer in terms of giving a lady a lightsaber.

My freshman year of college I hosted a Star Wars Trivial Pursuit competition among friends, in which I soundly destroyed eight guys. “You just knew the quotes from the movie really well,” a couple of them told me. I still felt triumphant and I swore that someday, my kids were going to love Star Wars and the timeless story it tells as much as I did.

I went to the theatre to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens on opening night with a six-week-old baby in my arms and ridiculously high hopes. Really, I was just praying they wouldn’t screw it up again. Seeing Han, Leia, and Chewie was like seeing old friends after a long absence; while it’s never quite the same, and I’m always surprised by how much they’ve changed, they were still mine. The core of their characters was here in all the best ways.

What surprised me was Rey. I knew I’d like her, but I didn’t know I’d love her, and I didn’t know she’d make me feel redeemed, like some ancient wrong had been righted. When she refused to accept Finn’s hand, racing across the desert sands, I grinned. When Han offered her a spot on the Falcon’s crew with no backhanded “pretty good for a girl,” I silently cheered. And when she crossed lightsabers with Kylo Ren in the darkness of the forest I cried in spite of myself. I was, once again, a little girl playing at being a Jedi.

This time, though, I could be myself.

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About the Creator

Sarah Quinn

I'm a writer in love with India, Stars Wars, fantasy, travel, and Thai curries. My childhood heroes were Luke Skywalker and Joan of Arc. I muse on superheroes, sci-fi, feminism, and more.

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